Beauchamp, Pierre Fran¨ois Godart de The history of King Apprius London 1728
[Beauchamp, Pierre Fran¨ois Godart de.] The history of King Apprius, &c. Extracted from the chronicle of the world, from its creation. Translated from a Persian manuscript found in the library of Schah-Hussain, Sophi of Persia, dethroned by Mamut in 1722. By a gentleman who served in the Persian armies. London: sold by the booksellers of London and Westminster, 1728. 116 pp. 12mo, 19th-century polished calf, gilt, spine gilt, black morocco label (a trifle rubbed). First edition in English; first published in "Constantinople" (i.e. Lyon) earlier the same year (and often reprinted). A remarkable piece of obscene fiction, originally intended as a vicious satire on the Regent, the duc de Bourbon, and his court. The Regent is portrayed as Apprius, a transparent anagram of Priapus, and his two favorites, who are in constant attendance, are called Clisettes (i.e. testicles). The story is a thinly-veiled account of sexual adventures, in which all the characters and place-names have been anagrammatized, and little is left to the "tinonamigia." The cast includes "gerbubres" and "titceamas," who engage in a hunt for an "enoteric," and make use of "liddoes" in the pursuit of a "litocris." The effect is in fact rather outrageous; one suspects that the point of the satire was essentially lost on the average English reader, and that the appeal was solely to prurience. The publisher of this little book has sometimes been identified as Edmund Curll, who was much involved at this period with Pope and his Dunciad; it is certainly the sort of text with which Curll was often involved. French printings of this novel are not uncommon, but the English translation is rare; the ESTC (06/06) lists five copies only (L, Cp; CLU-C, ICN, MnU). With the title-page printed in red and black; at the end is a paste-on errata slip. In very good condition. McBurney 236; Rose, Register of Erotic Books, 2215 (a Dublin imprint only,"really by Curll); CBEL II, 992 ("obscene account of sexual matters").
£1500
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